You can try Vicks for a while, but at some point you have to desensitize. That involves finding some really horrific smells, focusing all of your willpower, and trapping yourself in proximity to it. Once you've done this a few times with awful smells, it gets a lot more difficult to initiate that gag reflex.

I've smelled diarrhea covering a whole bed that had hardly any smell and farts that could stun an elephant. If the smell is bad enough - doesn't matter how much you try to mask it - it's going to get through.

The worst I think are the smells that linger with you - sometimes I'll be walking out of the room and I'll keep smelling it and and when I ask the people around me if they can smell the stench - they look confused and say no! So I tend to walk around paranoid for a bit thinking that the smell is on me etc.

I wonder though - how do you guys tactfully spray a room after a really bad BM/Smell? I feel so bad when I do it and the patient apologizes - or they're quite but I know that they hear the spray and probably feel bad.

I use Hall's Mentho-lyptus coughdrops and those little Listerine gel-strip things made for freshening breath. If you pop 3 of those in your mouth, you can't concentrate on much other than them, sensorily. Vicks Vaporub tends to look shiny unless you put it inside your nostrils. Who wants a shiny upper lip?

I have just spent 2 days in my first clinical in extended care facility and have not smelled anything bad yet! (did I get lucky?) We are not allowed to wear perfume. I think I might throw some Halls in my pocket just in case.